6:22. The greyness before the light knows what it wants to be.
Coffee, made before fully waking, operated by the hands without the head's involvement. The hands know where everything is. The head is still in some other country.
The table. The particular quality of table-silence in the early morning: different from the silence of night, which is restful; different from the silence of afternoon, which is productive. Morning silence is provisional. It is waiting to see what the day will require.
A bird, outside. Then more birds. Then the machinery of the street beginning its negotiations.
The coffee. The window. The light arriving at an angle that lays a shape on the floor I have seen many times and never named.
A thought about something from last week that hasn't finished being thought about. The thought circling, not arriving anywhere. Filed for later.
Second coffee. The day acquiring its edges.
The question of what to do with a morning that has not yet been assigned. The rarer question of whether to assign it.
The decision, made and remade every morning since I can remember, to begin.
Something written. Not much. Enough.
The greyness has been replaced, at some point during all of this, by light. The birds have moved on to whatever birds move on to after the morning's opening statement. The street is operating.
I am operating.
This is, more or less, the whole of it.